Note:Many old comments were lost in a database crash in 2008. Some conversations may seem to make less sense than they would have. A few will make more sense now.

1. 
   Theriomorph 2007 09 09 at 5:31:44 pm

   So insanely beautiful, this abundance of stars and Milky Way and Joshua tree - welcome back, Chris, we missed you!

2. 
   Sherwood 2007 09 09 at 9:25:51 pm

   Wow, Chris, the center of the startrail arcs is below the bottom of the frame.  You must have been at the bottom of a pretty high hilltop to your SSW for this shot—or you were actually down in southern Central America instead of where we thought you were.

   Idlemind, my most vivid memory of the Milky Way is from the aftermath of an earthquake, too.  I was living in the Adams Point neighborhood of Oakland at the time of ‘89’s Loma Prieta ‘quake.  A group of us sat on the front porch of our apartment building, jittering with fear’s adrenalin, eyes wide in the darkest urban dark we had ever not-seen, and were enthralled by the brilliant sky above us, the Milky Way riding high.  Surrounding buildings’ silhouettes were occasionally flashed with blue halos by transformers’ distant explosions.

   Coming in a close second was the view of the center of the galaxy from Uluru/Katatjuta in April of ‘86, but that’s another story.

   You’re right, Idlemind, about two generations who have lost the Milky Way (at least in the USA.)  When I first started teaching Astronomy in the early 1970’s (I include the “19” part of that just to thwart a possible Clarke snark about my age), I started polling my classes concerning how many of them had ever seen the Milky Way and knew what they were seeing.  In the ‘70’s, the response was typically about 75%.  By the late ‘80’s it had dropped to below 50%, and by 2000 it was 10% or even less.  I don’t even bother asking, now, and treat the planetarium’s various ways of representing the MW as an introduction for everyone.

   Anyway, welcome back, Chris, and thanks for letting us appreciate Ms. T. in this arena while you were away.

3. 
   Chris Clarke 2007 09 09 at 9:29:12 pm

   She will continue to play Ms T. for us a while longer, we hope.

4. 
   Chris Clarke 2007 09 09 at 9:30:50 pm

   Oh, and this photo was taken around 60 miles south of Vegas, and facing SSW from a more or less hilltop of 5100 feet above sea level. With a wide angle lens that may have bent things.

5. 
   Hank Fox 2007 09 09 at 10:30:44 pm

   And how long an exposure?

6. 
   Chris Clarke 2007 09 09 at 10:33:31 pm

   Didn’t really count it out. A couple minutes.

7. 
   Sherwood 2007 09 09 at 11:12:29 pm

   Looks a little longer than that.

   The trail arcs could be used by someone a bit more driven than I am to figure out the exposure time precisely, of course.  That would be treading a bit too close to becoming tired and sick, though, and I’d be tempted to rise and glide out, wander off by myself in the mystical moist night-air, and, from time to time, look up in perfect silence at Walt Whitman’s stars.

   ‘Course, in my case and at my age, rising all by itself is pretty tough, let alone “gliding,” and here in the Hollow of the Dogs there’s no such thing as “perfect silence.”  And in this parched September in the San Lorenzo, the night air, while mystical, ain’t moist.

8. 
   Chris Clarke 2007 09 11 at 1:08:52 am

   Well, truth be told, I meant “a couple” in its little-used sense of “fewer than thirty.”

9. 
   Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez 2007 09 16 at 4:22:29 pm

   incredible.